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Tech News 2Night 68 (Transcript)

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Tonight, Dropbox is on an acquisition spree, Facebook wants you and your friends to hang out IRL, and will you look sexy or stupid in Google Glass? The company will let you try out a pair for free..
Tech News 2Night is Next!
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This is Tech News 2Night Episode 68, for Thursday April 17, 2014
This episode of Tech News 2Night is brought to you by lynda.com. Learn what you want, when you want, with access to over 2,400 high-quality online courses--all for one low monthly price. To try it free for 7 days, visit lynda.com/tn2. That’s L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash T-N-2.
I'm Sarah Lane, Let's get right to the Tech Feed!
Dropbox just can't stop acquiring companies. Today news went public that photo stream app Loom is now a Dropbox property and the 8-person team now works on Dropbox’s new Carousel photo app. The Loom product is being shut down, and users will be migrated to Carousel. Also acquired by Dropbox is collaborative document tool Hackpad, an online text editor that competes directly with Google Docs, and corporate chat tool Zulip - which is still in private beta. Social e-book reader Readmill was also bought by Dropbox and the deal closed 2 weeks ago. At a recent press event, Dropbox called its future direction to be “a home for life”, though Re/code reports that internally staff calls it “Chapter Two”.
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Facebook has begun rolling out a new opt-in feature called Nearby Friends, where friends can view friends' current locations on a map, and share exact, on-going location with each other for a limited time. The new feature was built from technology from location sharing app Glancee, which Facebook bought in 2012. It adds a list of nearby friends to Facebook’s iOS and Android apps, and will send notifications if you come within a short distance of a friend. Facebook pulls GPS coordinates to get locations, but unlike other location apps like Foursquare or Google Latitude is that it’s centered around broadcasting proximity, not location.
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Well, last September Twitter acquired mobile ad exchange MoPub, and today the company unveiled a new mobile app promotion suite which uses MoPub technology, which will allow marketers to promote their apps both on and off Twitter. Advertisers can now run simultaneous marketing campaigns both on Twitter and MoPub to push users to download their mobile apps with a one-click download button. The MoPub marketplace reaches more than one billion unique devices around the world and andles more than 130 billion ad requests every 30 days. Now, advertisers no longer have to set up ads through separate portals, and Twitter gets to rely less on growing its user base for ad revenue. The new feature is now available to select U.S. advertisers in private beta.
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Amazon announced today that starting this summer, it will expand voice search functionality in its Fire TV media streaming box to include Hulu Plus, Crackle, and Showtime Anytime. Currently, Fire TV's voice search only supports Amazon's own content, and music videos from Vevo. The company also says it's working on features to improve discovery of content inlcuded for free with its Prime subscriptions, and adding more games to its library of titles.
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Google now has an in-home try-on program for Google Glass that lets prospective buyers try on different Glass colors, including the Titanium Collection. 9to5google reports theses are returned units which have their USB ports destroyed, so prospective buyers can't actually use the interface, but merely see how they might look while wearing a pair. The program is free but a $50 charge is placed on a credit card and removed when the units are returned. Google Glass is expected to be released later this year for less than the current $1,500 Explorer price.
Coming up, Honda's ASIMO robot is getting more lifelike, and sort of in a creepy way,
Up Next, I'll talk with Maggie Reardon from CNET about how Apple might integrate Shazam into iOS 8.
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Maggie Reardon Sr Writer CNET
Apple Said to Prepare Song-ID Feature for IPhone Software
-Bloomberg is reporting that Apple might build song identification directly into iOS by partnering with shazam. How would this work?
- Download sales fell last year for the first since the iTunes store debuted, according to Nielsen SoundScan., is this designed to drive downloads? what about itunes radio?
4 freshmen at U. of Penn developed an app called Googolplex at a hackathon that gives Siri new powers
-must change proxy settings, then Siri can control other apps or some home automation functions - change your WiFi connection's proxy settings, then play tunes in Spotify, fiddle with a Nest thermostat, start your Tesla..
- This was not a Silicon Valley start-up who did this, how long do you think before we see Apple or even Android or Cortana doing something like this?
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Finally, Honda's ASIMO robot has come a long way. The latest version is 4 feet tall and 115 pounds, and features five dextrous fingers on each hand with force feedback sensors. At its first North America demonstration at the International Auto Show in New York on yesterday, ASIMO could pick up a sealed container and unscrew the top, pick up a piece of paper, navigate a floor, and walk up a flight of steps without pausing (or falling). This all thanks to sensors, including two camera eyes and the sensors in its hands, which can tell what kind of object it is and how much it weighs. Honda started the ASIMO project in 1996. The robot can understand a handful of phrases and is currently well skilled at Japanese sign language. The robot's battery still doesn't last more than 40 minutes, but it can now also jump in place, hop on one foot, and even serve tea.
[good bye] That's it for this edition of Tech News 2Night.
Subscribe to this show at Twit.tv/tn2, and write us at tn2@twit.tv
Don't miss our morning news program, Tech News Today, tomorrow and every weekday at 10am Pacific, 1 pm Eastern. I'm Sarah Lane, thanks for watching.
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